# floating point numbers / decode_binary()

Brack (slayer@kaiwan.com)
Mon, 16 Dec 1996 04:32:13 PST

- Messages sorted by:[ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]

    I thought floating point numbers only had a precision up to like 15-17
    digits or so. It seems the largest floating point number I can use is
    1.79769313486231e+308. But, if I put a real long float number, such as
    ;1.79769313486231580793728971405303415079
    it will round off to 1.79769313486232e+308. But, I can't re-eval
    1.79769313486232e+308 because it will give me an overflow. Also if I try
    1.797693134862315807937289714053034150791 it gives an overflow tb as well.

    I also posted on Lambda while this list was down, I noticed if you try
    something like decode_binary("~80~03~90") I correctly get {128, 3, 144} but
    if I try decode_binary("~80~03~90", 1) it comes out as {-128, 3, -112}; I
    was told it was due to using signed integer types rather than unsigned in
    the server code.

    It's Brack, with the sig for the masses!     slayer@kaiwan.com
    "This is not a signature." - Me 	      http://www.kaiwan.com/~slayer
    *U@#(*EU#*#&$(##))(#*) - secret code  PGP key: finger slayer@sanar.kaiwan.com